As Kate and Gerry McCann woke up to the 11th birthday of their missing daughter Madeleine, news reports brought new twists in the high-profile seven-year investigation.

The first is that Scotland Yard detectives have quizzed a 68-year-old convicted paedophile in his prison cell, reportedly about a cleaning business he ran in the Algarve at the time Madeleine went missing.

Anthony Woodhouse is reported to have spent more than 10 years on the run in Portugal after raping a 14-year-old who subsequently became pregnant.

After being grilled for over two hours by Met police, Woodhouse is understood to have been taunted by prison inmates chanting "Give her back".

As this latest twist in the long-running saga hit the British tabloids, Portugal's equivalent, the Correio da Manhã, revealed that the PJ police have sanctioned the Met's request for searches of various sites in Praia da Luz, but has not yet decided "whether the means to be used will be exclusively English".

Scotland Yard wants to use geo-radar and sniffer dogs, as well as British forensic teams, writes Sol website. But the decision is in the hands of the PJ, which also has radar, bought four years ago, able to capture images in the subsoil.

The radar has already been used in a number of cases, including during searches for the bodies of the victims of 'King Ghob', adds Sol (Francisco Leitão, a.k.a. Rei Ghob is currently serving 25 years for the murders of four young Portuguese).

"If the geo-radar detects something suspicious, digging will follow," Sol affirms. "The objective is to find Madeleine's body or other clues, like items of clothing or weapons."

Nonetheless, the news site contends that the PJ has already done a thorough search of all these sites and come up empty-handed.

Meanwhile, TV commentator and critic Eduardo Cintra Torres has criticised the Madeleine razzmatazz that seems to have been stirred up by Scotland Yard in the past week.

"With so many children disappearing in England, did he choose the Madeleine case because he would appear on television?

"Why are the Portuguese police being subservient to this mockery?" He added. "We need to ask, what exactly is going on? This is all just ridiculous. Just a way of showing off."

Torres' contentions have been echoed elsewhere with critics suggesting the British police are trying to justify the millions spent so far by Operation Grange in the search for Madeleine's alleged abductor. Others have suggested it is an election ploy of the British government in the run-up to the European elections.

Whatever the motivation, Torres claims it is "shameful for the Portuguese state to allow the mediatisation of an investigation that belongs to the Portuguese and not to the English.

"If we tried to do the same in England, would they allow it?" He asked. "Of course not!"